Smart and Scary

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2004)

A trio of well-meaning animal rights activists break into an experimental lab somewhere in England, intent on freeing the monkeys within. The only problem is that the monkeys, cruelly wired up and forced to watch loops of violent images, have been injected with "rage," a neuro-stimulant which produces uncontrollable homicidal anger. Within seconds, one of the activists has been infected by a monkey bite. 28 Days Later (a ha, we have a title!) nearly all of England, and possibly the rest of the world, has been decimated.
Enter Jim, a young bicycle courier whose last memory was being struck by a car. He wakes up in an empty hospital and soon wanders out into the wasteland that Britain has become with no idea of what has happened while he was asleep. He soon comes face to face with the hordes of infected, as well as with a handful of survivors, including a tough, pretty girl named Selena and a father and daughter who have turned their London flat into a fortress.
I have heard "28 Days Later" compared to "Dawn of the Dead" (the 1978 version) more than once, although "28 Days Later" is not a zombie film, per se. It is indeed a "plague apocalypse" film, and a damn good one at that. The infected definitely do resemble zombies...really incredibly FAST zombies; no shuffling Fulci monsters here. The virus spreads quickly and is most often spread by bites from an infected, not unlike the zombie contagion. There's even a free shopping spree scene a la "Dawn of the Dead." But there's also a scene like that in "Night of the Comet" and I don't hear as many comparisons drawn between that film and DOTD as this one. "28 Days Later" is an intelligent, tense and powerful film, more than able to stand on its own no matter what it may or may not have been inspired by. The second half of the film, which finds our small band of heroes ensconced within a pseudo-military base with a handful of crude and desperate soldiers, is more harrowing and tense than any scene up to that point. Once again, it is the humans who are to be feared, not the monsters outside, and a deadly three-way battle between humans, soldiers and infected was both frightening and exhausting to watch. Everyone turns in an excellent performance, and a highly satisfactory ending left me exhilarated.
This is truly one of the best and most original new horror movies I have yet seen.